Somehow I missed this announcement a few days back, but here it is anyway:

The sixth release of the enterprise library has been released and it includes all the blocks you're already familiar with updated for Visual Studio 2008, plus the new Unity Application Block for dependency injection.

What’s New in v4.0?

This release of Enterprise Library includes the following:

• Integration with the Unity Application Block
• Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) 2.0 support and improved instrumentation
• Performance improvements (particularly, in the Logging Application Block)
• Pluggable Cache Managers
• Visual Studio 2008 support
• Bug fixes

Note: existing public APIs (v3.1) are still supported.

The Application Block Software Factory and the Strong Naming Guidance Package are not included in this release but are available as a separate download. Thus, there is no longer a dependency on Guidance Automation Extensions (GAX).

 Read the entire article at Tom Hollander's blog:  http://blogs.msdn.com/tomholl/archive/2008/05/17/enterprise-library-4-0-get-it-while-it-s-hot.aspx

Quick Links:

– MSDN site: http://msdn.microsoft.com/entlib

– Community Forum: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=119312

– Community Extensions: http://codeplex.com/entlibcontrib

I noticed on Scott Guthrie's blog that the Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 Service Pack Beta have been released into the wild.  This beta brings about a whole slew of bug fixes and throws in some performance improvements for good measure. 

The beta can be downloaded from here.

Before I talk about the features in this service pack I wanted to raise a little awareness about a potential issue with the install.  I noticed in the comments to Scott's post a few issues with installations.  Apparently, if you you have previously installed some other beta stuff, such as Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio, you want to be sure to uninstall that stuff before installing the service pack.  I've also read that the install is a long one.

This service pack is not just bug fixes, it contains several new items of note.  I'm just going to summarize since you can read the details on Scott Guthrie's blog.

First, in web development:

• ASP.NET Data Scaffolding Support (ASP.NET Dynamic Data)
• ASP.NET Routing Engine (System.Web.Routing)
• ASP.NET AJAX Back/Forward Button History Support
• ASP.NET AJAX Script Combining Support
• Visual Studio 2008 Performance Improvements in the HTML Designer and HTML Source Editor
• Visual Studio 2008 JavaScript Script Formatting and Code Preferences
• Better Visual Studio JavaScript Intellisense for Multiple JavaScript/AJAX Frameworks
• Visual Studio Refactoring Support for WCF Services in ASP.NET Projects
• Visual Studio Support for Classic ASP Intellisense and Debugging
• Visual Web Developer Express Edition support for Class Library and Web Application Projects

Client Development:

• Application Startup and Working Set Performance Improvements
• New .NET Framework Client Profile Setup Package
• New .NET Framework Setup Bootstrapper for Client Applications
• ClickOnce Client Application Deployment Improvements
• New Windows Forms Controls (vector shapes, printing, and DataRepeater controls)
• WPF Performance Improvements
• WPF Data Improvements
• WPF Extensible Shader Effects
• WPF Interoperability with Direct3D
• Several VS 2008 for WPF Improvements

Data Development

• SQL 2008 Support
• ADO.NET Entity Framework and LINQ to Entities
• ADO.NET Data Services (formerly code-named "Astoria")
• WCF Development Improvements

There are also a few VB, C# and Team Foundation Server improvements.  Overall it appears to be a fairly comprehensive service pack with loads of goodies.  I haven't really messed with Silverlight yet and don't plan to until 2.0 is released, so for this service pack I'm particularly interested in the new ASP.NET Routing Engine and the ASP.NET Script Combining support.  Of course, all performance improvements are always welcome, too.